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Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

siberiantimes.com

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Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#121

Post by Two9A »

makmanalp wrote: post #112
bithive123 wrote: post #49

Here is a good video about the arctic methane emergency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F9ed5E54s4 Some summary points: - Total amount of methane in the current atmosphere: ~5 gigatons - Amount of carbon preserved as methane in the arctic shelf: estimated at 100s-1000s of gigatons - Only 1% release would double the atmospheric burden of methane - Not much effort is needed to destabilize this 1% - The volume current…

I wonder how many of these bubbles are harvestable into useful fuel? Prevent a crisis and stockpile fuel at the same time? Obviously it's nicer if we could get everyone to sign the Kyoto treaty but ...

[Unrelated: Good to see you're still around; feel free to drop by EFnet again sometime.]

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#122

Post by yongjik »

fjabre wrote: post #7
LyndsySimon wrote: post #3

Well... I guess let's hope the "Clathrate gun hypothesis" is incorrect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

If we can't figure out an engineering solution to this problem then it's game over. It always amazes me how much people and governments focus on prevention when it comes to climate change, knowing full well it's far too late to change anything by reducing carbon emissions. If we can't sequester these 'surplus' gases from the atmosphere then I guess you could say we don't have a chance in hell, pun intended, of surviv…

IMHO, even if we end up needing some mega-geoengineering project for our survival, it would still be cheaper if we first stop our CO2 emission and then plan for geoengineering, rather than building something scaled for our current CO2 emission trajectory.

Basically, if an oil tanker is leaking oil all over the beach, we should first plug the goddamn hole before talking about (expensive) solutions to clean up the contaminated beach. Doing it the other way just doesn't make sense.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#123

Post by Razengan »

clydethefrog wrote: post #44
cafebabbe wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then good luck rebuilding civilization now that every easily accessible resource has been mined/harvested out.

Let's hope the beings that will rebuild civilization will learn from our mistakes.

It's more likely that our successors will only inherit the harmful products of our civilization.

Consider this: People today are still dying from landmines and poisons that were using during wars a 100 years ago [0]. They may remain around for over 300 years [1].

The things that will most immediately affect the civilization after ours will probably be our radioactive waste, the long-term effects of climate change, the extinctions caused by us, unexploded mines and bombs, and stockpiles of nuclear and other weapons.

At best, the next civilization may dig up some of our machines and partially reverse-engineer them, but they'll probably never be able to access their original functionality. For example using our laptops/phones as a source of light, or their batteries as explosives. What little technology of ours that still fully works by then, will probably cause wars over its ownership, even if the tech itself is benign and beneficial.

----

If, like me, the idea of accumulation of technology over large expanses of time, across multiple civilizations and potentially multiple species is deeply interesting to you, you may love the world of Numenera [2] [3]; Earth, a billion years from now.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12187512

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12188466

[2] http://www.numenera.com

[3] https://store.steampowered.com/app/272270/

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#124

Post by davesque »

makmanalp wrote: post #112
bithive123 wrote: post #49

Here is a good video about the arctic methane emergency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F9ed5E54s4 Some summary points: - Total amount of methane in the current atmosphere: ~5 gigatons - Amount of carbon preserved as methane in the arctic shelf: estimated at 100s-1000s of gigatons - Only 1% release would double the atmospheric burden of methane - Not much effort is needed to destabilize this 1% - The volume current…

I wonder how many of these bubbles are harvestable into useful fuel? Prevent a crisis and stockpile fuel at the same time? Obviously it's nicer if we could get everyone to sign the Kyoto treaty but ...

I've thought about this, but I think there's a serious question as to whether humans can even muster an effort on the scale that would be required to harvest and prevent release into the atmosphere.

Take ocean clathrates, for example. At a certain point, the ocean may become warm enough to destabilize them. What do we do in that case? Put up collection tents over the ocean that are millions of square kilometers large? The problem just doesn't seem tractable.

But who knows? I'm certainly not the sort of engineer that is qualified to answer these questions.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#125

Post by Keyframe »

delecti wrote: post #102
Keyframe wrote: post #81

Could one pierce a bubble and syphon/concentrate the gas into a tank with a pump? Might be too late, considering how many there are and how remote they are. edit: nm, I saw that conference where they've shown Methane releasing from the submerged Siberian plane. We're fucked.

Naively, it seems like that would be a bit like trying to pop a helium balloon and recapture the helium. Though I'm certainly not an expert, and it's possible it'd be more akin to natural gas drilling, which we have some experience in.

If you look at the video in the article, there's a dude poking a hole with his boot in one of the smaller bubble. It looks like a possibility to capture the gas, maybe drill from top on the smaller ones and from side or bottom on the large ones... but, I'm not an expert. Also, top comment here linked to a conference where they've showed a submerged Siberian plane bubbling gas from beneath sea surface - 500 to 5000G of Methane. So long, and thanks for all the fish :/

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#126

Post by samatman »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #97
cafebabbe wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "solution" fucking sucks. We kinda rely on the sun to grow plants and power life, you know?

Erm, it's not like anyone is suggesting "block all sunlight". We're talking about blocking at most a few percent. On this topic, I've always wondered if you could make such a solar shade that hovers just on the far side of the Lagrange point between sun and earth, balancing radiation pressure and gravity. Does anyone know if that would be passively stable?

Not quite, something would have be done about lateral motion. L1-L3 are only stable along the axis between the orbiting bodies. L4 and L5 are local gravitational minima, but that doesn't help us here.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#127

Post by zasz »

Retric wrote: post #82
bithive123 wrote: post #49

Here is a good video about the arctic methane emergency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F9ed5E54s4 Some summary points: - Total amount of methane in the current atmosphere: ~5 gigatons - Amount of carbon preserved as methane in the arctic shelf: estimated at 100s-1000s of gigatons - Only 1% release would double the atmospheric burden of methane - Not much effort is needed to destabilize this 1% - The volume current…

Methane has a short ~5-10 year half life in the atmosphere. So, releasing 50x current methane levels over 100 years does not triple current methane levels.

Where did you get that? Every link I've ever seen indicates that the half-life is 7-9 years.

Regardless of what the half-life is, what you say is true about the concentration of methane. It is so much better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, though, that even over a 100 year time frame, it will warm the earth 34 times more than carbon dioxide would. (https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warmin...)

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#128

Post by Razengan »

gnaritas wrote: post #120
Razengan wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preserving human knowledge and art [0] won't require mobilizing all of mankind; it could be done by a few individuals and it's kinda already being done by Wikipedia, Wikia, "pirates" etc. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13944410

True, however, the problem is preserving humans from near extinction, not preserving our knowledge and culture for the few who might survive if we ignore the problem.

> for the few who might survive

It doesn't have to be for our survivors... We could, and I believe we should, do it for the next civilization to come after ours, even if it's a few alien visitors.

If for no other reason than to leave a legacy of our short existence against the infinity of this universe.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#129

Post by codecamper »

Retric wrote: post #82
bithive123 wrote: post #49

Here is a good video about the arctic methane emergency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F9ed5E54s4 Some summary points: - Total amount of methane in the current atmosphere: ~5 gigatons - Amount of carbon preserved as methane in the arctic shelf: estimated at 100s-1000s of gigatons - Only 1% release would double the atmospheric burden of methane - Not much effort is needed to destabilize this 1% - The volume current…

Methane has a short ~5-10 year half life in the atmosphere. So, releasing 50x current methane levels over 100 years does not triple current methane levels.

Seven years. And after that you get carbon dioxide (& water)

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#130

Post by bufbupa »

philipkglass wrote: post #12
fjabre wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we can't figure out an engineering solution to this problem then it's game over. It always amazes me how much people and governments focus on prevention when it comes to climate change, knowing full well it's far too late to change anything by reducing carbon emissions. If we can't sequester these 'surplus' gases from the atmosphere then I guess you could say we don't have a chance in hell, pun intended, of surviv…

Artificial sulfate aerosols look like they could quickly damp positive feedbacks though of course they're no permanent fix and won't do anything to counteract ocean acidification. There are more permanent fixes possible in theory (large scale accelerated silicate weathering) but their feasibility hinges, IMO, on some rather optimistic assumptions about the future trajectory of robotics. Metaphorically speaking, we no…

Can you elaborate on the optimistic assumptions in robotics that may enable accelerated silicate weathering? Or could you point me to some readings on the matter?
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